Landlords practically giving malls away

'Who'd want to buy them?'

Published: 06/12/2018 at 12:54 PM

(BLOOMBERG) — Landlords have malls they’d like to unload. But who’d want to buy them?

As they battle the rise of e-commerce, U.S. mall owners are trying to clear their books of fading centers so they can focus on the most-profitable ones. That’s proving difficult, with just a shallow pool of investors who are willing to take on a declining mall and even fewer who would pay what the landlords want. Only about $3 billion of retail real estate changed hands in April, a 27 percent drop from a year earlier and the lowest monthly tally since February 2013, according to the latest data from Real Capital Analytics Inc.